SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Skimin, Robert
(1929-2011) US author of historical novels and studies, and of at least two Alternate History fictions in which the American nineteenth century is tweaked. The Jonbar Point in Gray Victory (1988) is Confederate President Jefferson Davis's decision not to replace the commander of the Atlanta, Georgia defences; Atlanta is not destroyed, and America remains divided into two nations. Courtroom intrigues, and a ...
Pares, Bip
Working name of UK illustrator Ethel Pares (1904-1977); the "Bip" came from her childhood attempt to pronounce the name of a family horse. Most of her circa 600 covers were done before World War Two, often for works of genre interest: much of this work continues to await discovery. Some of her best work appeared on the covers of sf novels, such as E Phillips Oppenheim's The Dumb Gods Speak (1937) and the same author's ...
Grattan-Smith, T E
(1871-1946) Australian ventriloquist, journalist and author of children's fiction (see Children's SF) born Thomas Edward Grattan Smith, using Grattan-Smith for his publishing activities. His Lost World novel, The Cave of a Thousand Columns (1938) exposes two young adventurers to Monsters and a non-human species known as the Birdmen in vast Underground ...
Ye Yonglie
(1940-2020) Chinese author and occasional film director, sometimes under the pen-names Ye Yang, Ye Ting, Xiao Yong or Jiu Yuan, whose output stretches to fifty volumes of material, of which twenty-four are listed as "works popularizing science". A graduate in chemistry from Beijing University, Ye published his first poem aged eleven, and his first book while still a student. Aged twenty, he became one of the lead authors in the best-selling periodical ...
Samovar
US professional Online Magazine, an offshoot sister publication to Strange Horizons, filling one of that magazine's weekly slots on a quarterly basis, starting 27 March 2017. / Samovar is edited by Sarah Dodd and Greg West, along with co-editor Sarah Brooks, with an Advisory Board that includes Dr Helen Marshall, Rachel Cordasco and Marian Via Rivera-Womack. Its purpose is to ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...